This is a GIF picture from the 4th Annual Hallowmeme costume party in New York City.  I got it from this awesome AngleFire site I found: http://www.hallowme.me. I couldn’t go because it was too expensive and none of my friends with licenses wanted to go. What is up with that? Sometimes I think people who are really excited to get some government document are secretly lame. Its like the government tells people to think that the people with licenses are cool so that people will get more licenses. I don’t think making people drive cars to get places is a great way to build cities and towns, etc. What is up with that? Anyway, I think its interesting that people like to dress up like things on the Internet and take pictures of each other and put them back on the Internet.

This one is my favorite. I found it on Buzzfeed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jolin/hallowmeme-2012-where-internet-memes-come-to-life?sub=1841808_661108

First, I think it is interesting that memes, even if we always see them on the WWW, they are sometimes performed or made in the physical world. This cool page says some smart things about memes: https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/12/06/internet-memes-the-mythology-of-augmented-society/. I especially like this part:

Not only can we see that the myth and the meme share a semiotic structure, but I argue that the internet meme is the predominant and logical form of myth in an augmented society. I put forth 4 supports for this argument, all of which link the construction and spread of internet memes to the affordances of augmented reality: 1) internet memes are simultaneously digital and physical; 2) internet memes are quickly spread and often 3) user generated; 4) internet memes are easily adaptable.

So when people dress up like memes, its like they’re doing memes in reverse! But it isn’t really the reverse because memes are always digital and physical at the same time.  So when we dress up like memes its kinda like dressing up like a character from a novel like The Red Badge of Courage (OMG I just finished reading this for English class and it was SO BORING!) but if its gonna be a really good costume it can’t just be the character it has to have a little bit about the story too. So, maybe if you want to dress up as Henry Fleming you wouldn’t just make yourself look like a Civil War soldier you might also make yourself look really young because the author Stephen Crane “refers to Henry as “the young soldier” and “the youth.” This means Henry is not just a soldier but also represents youthfulness and being young and thinking simply about complex ideas such as war and battle. Memes are like this too because if you just dress up like a dude with ugly khakis and a boring tie people might think you are a dude from Office Space when in reality you are trying to be “Hipster Cop” from the NYPD:
Here I tried to be a soldier from the USSR. It isn’t an Internet meme but it works the same. I could have dome more to give my costume “context clues.”

A good way to make sure everyone knows you are Hipster Cop is to make sure you have an NYPD badge (A fake one of course ;)) and also maybe have your friend dress up like that girl that was pepper sprayed in the very beginning. Then people will get your costume a lot better.  One year I dressed up as a soldier from the USSR but I don’t think anyone noticed until they looked at the patches really closely. In English there is a technique for understanding words you don’t know called “context clues.” You can use words around the word you do not know to help you understand what that word means. Really good costumes bring their own “context clues” to help others understand your costume. Like that article that I linked to before says, memes are myths and myths are kinda like stories, so we are wearing stories. You have to tell the story really well with stuff like your outfit and your hair so that you don’t have to do the embarrassing thing where you have to describe your costume. But sometimes, it is cool when people have to interpret your costume for a few seconds. For people to do this they usually have to like the same things and talk about those same things all the time. Like, the jocks might not get a meme costume about Nyan Cat but they might get Scumbag Steve. It could take a second or two before the the jock recognizes the hat from a /b/ message board, but maybe a girl could recognize the Nyan Cat outfit and really like it. Nathan told me this was a really great way to start conversations with girls but I don’t believe him.

Internet meme costumes are a cool way to share a cool joke or a story. They do not really have to ALWAYS be from just the Internet. They just have to be popular on the Internet. Honey Boo Boo (someone is dressed like her in that top photo GIF), Hipster Cop, Pokémon, Banksy’s Anarchist-Throwing flowers, and that mom that loved tanning were made for other kinds of media. The memes are talking about those things that happened, and most of that talking happens on the Internet so they get mistaken for Internet things but really they are just things that people say to each other. So, its like the meme is a social thing and a thing that is made in technology. 

I’m going as Vermin Supreme for Halloween. He’s a guy but he’s also a meme. So I guess that means I am dressing as a meme, but I’m also dressing up as a person! He has a great youtube video about it!

 

 Anyway, apparently my parents found out about this blog and read it now, so I’m gonna have to make this journal friends-ONLY pretty soon. I don’t understand why parents have to always read things that their sons and daughters write on the Internet. Its not like the Internet is doing anything bad to us. AND PLEASE MOM AND DAD DO NOT COMMENT ON THIS BLOG ITS JUST FOR MY FRIENDS!

 

 

Current Mood: Nervous but excited

 

 

Current Music: “Muzzle”, by The Smashing Pumpkins